Unless your business expansion somehow leads to an increase in the labor force, simple arithmetic says that it didn’t add jobs. It may have created better jobs; it may have raised productivity; but more jobs, no.

How do Samuelson and others answer this point? As far as I can tell, with sheer mystical gobbledygook about dynamism and whatever. And they have the nerve to call the Times editorial board flat-earthers.

The arithmetic point is a good try but the real problem is we are dealing with a “Wrong Question.”

Ask yourself this: Who creates retail sales?

Or, here is another one. As I write this 31 million shares of Bank of America have been sold this morning. Who created those sales?

Ironically – and this seems to keep happening – the exact same number (31 Million) shares of Bank of America have been bought this morning. Who created those purchases?

Was it the same entity who created the sales? Because if so, they are extremely meticulous. Each morning, they create the same number of sales as purchases.

I am being silly to illustrate that the job creation “question” is just as ridiculous. In fact, the job creation question is more ridiculous because Bank of America does indeed have a market maker.

Most things, including jobs, don’t have a market maker. Like every other market transaction, jobs are created when a buyer and seller meet and agree to a trade. The absence of a market maker or Universal Job Exchange is why every single day in America there workers are looking for employment at the exact same time that employers are looking for workers.

“Sure cute.” you say, “But Samelson was talking about the engine of growth”.

Indeed, he was. He wrote:

[Don’t forget the] money to support all these government jobs. It must come from somewhere — generally, taxes or loans (bonds, bills). But if the people whose money is taken via taxation or borrowing had kept the money, they would have spent most or all of it on something — and that spending would have boosted employment.

This is an odd concern for the government to have given that, in the words of our most eminent and noble Federal Reserve Chairman, “The government possesses a technology known as the printing press, which allows it to create an unlimited supply of money at virtually no cost”

Its no secret that I and my fellow travelers have implored Chairman Bernanke to turn on said printing press and create us some more jobs.

Yet, the reason we even have to worry about the money supply at all is that willing workers and willing employers have such a hard time seeing eye-to-eye on the salary that will be attached to a given job.

Employers make life difficult by being insufferably stingy. They are always prattling on about free-cash-flow and the need to make bond and dividend payments.

Employees are no better. They greedily and incessantly whine about the need to make their mortgage or car payments.

If both parties would just get over themselves, there would be jobs-a-plenty.

After all, every millisecond computers at Goldman Sachs and computers at Morgan Stanley agree on a new price at which they will either buy or sell shares of Bank of America. If humans were as cordial and co-operative, our jobs problem would have been solved years ago.

But, humans love to make promises. Mostly to woo women, I suspect. Not only that but often humans refuse to break promises even when everyone would be better off if they did.

And, so the employer will desperately try not to break her promise to her shareholders. And, the worker will desperately try not to break his promise to his mortgage lender. As a result they won’t agree on jobs terms. Trade they could have happened won’t.

Factories will sit idle waiting for workers who will not come. Workers will sit at home watching Judge Judy, waiting for a factory that will not open. And when they have finally run out of options, both the worker and the employer will break their promises nonetheless.

What does any of this have to do with government vs. the private sector? Nothing.